From Soto Teachers: The Essential Art of Zazen / Letting Go

[Dosho]

I don't like the concept of "letting go." For me, it's too tied into the new agey way that French people always talk about how one should better oneself by letting go of an undefined everything (lacher prise). In fact, I hardly ever see this concept in English.

How about "letting be," or just "being?"

Perhaps you just need to let it go Kirk.

Gassho,
Dosho

[Ishin]

Thank you for sharing
Gassho
C

[jambudvipian]

“Letting go” is so much stuff and nonsense when there is no one “letting go” and nothing to “let go”, but rather than kicking that dead dog, let’s go to Master Nishijima and Master Dōgen. We know they know why zazen “works”.

In his Shōbōgenzō Translator’s Note to Establishment of the Bodhi-Mind (Chapter 70), Master Nishijima calls it The Theory of Instantaneousness. Master Dōgen’s explains it when he describes the momentary appearance and disappearance of the the universe.

When, in Chapter 1 (Bendōwa), Master Dōgen says the problem is “we cannot perceive it directly,” Master Nishijima explains in his Notes that “perceive it directly” in Japanese is a way of saying “receiving a hit” and that it means “to be struck by reality directly in a momentary experience.” He says Master Dōgen explained it this way: “Using this body and mind, we directly experience the state of buddha. This is to receive a hit.”

Every time we sit zazen with right intention of aspiring to be a bodhisattva we receive this “hit ...always in a twinkling of the Dharma-Eye -- whether we know it or not! It is experiential not intellectual but knowing about it can prepare us for our direct perception, i.e., experience of the bodhi-mind when it happens instantaneously during the arising and disappearance of the universe. Zap! Instantly, you are there in bodhi-mind and back again before you even know it. Gone! Gone! Bodhi Svaha! You’ve taken a hit! You’ll sit and sit again and sit in zazen forever because with every hit you receive the bodhi-mind is incrementally establishing itself; and that’s buddha in action.

Bodhi-mind “hits” happen in-between inconceivably small increments of “time” during which all aggregates, i.e., all conditioned dharmas, arise and disappear. In Chapter 70, Master Dōgen says these nano-moments are called “kṣaṇas”. There are sixty-five kṣaṇas in the time it takes to snap your fingers. In each kṣaṇa “the five aggregates arise and vanish, but no common person has ever sensed it or known it.” Although we are aware of “tatkṣaṇas”, i.e., moments equal to 120 kṣaṇas and in every 24 hours there are 6,400,990,980 kṣaṇas, we do not experience the arising and disappearance of all aggregates because we are not established in bodhi-mind.

Master Dōgen says, “Because mind and real dharmas are both beyond subject, object, combination, and causelessness, if we establish this bodhi-mind for a single kṣaṇa, the myriad dharmas will all become promoting conditions.In general, establishment of the mind and attainment of the truth rely upon the instantaneous arising and vanishing of all things. If [all things] did not arise and vanish instantaneously, bad done in the previous instant could not depart. If bad done in the previous instant had not yet departed, good in the next instant could not be realized in the present. Only the Tathagata clearly knows the length of this instant.”

When we enter into zazen with a bodhsattva’s aspiration, it is during that instantaneous arising and disappearance of all conditioned dharmas that we receive the “hit” – that instantaneous direct perception of buddha. And the hits just keep on comin’.

Master Dōgen says, “Those who do not know the Buddha-Dharma and do not believe the Buddha-Dharma do not believe the principle of instantaneous arising and vanishing. One who clarifies the Tathagata’s right Dharma-eye treasury and the fine mind of nirvana inevitably believes this principle of instantaneous arising and vanishing. Meeting now the Tathagata’s teaching, we feel as if we clearly understand, but we are merely aware of periods of a tatkṣaṇa or longer, and we only believe the principle to be true. Our failure to clarify and failure to know all the dharmas that the World-honored One taught is like our failure to know the length of a kṣaṇa: students must never carelessly become proud. behavior, the cycle of life and death continues without stopping for a single kṣaṇa.”

[Entai]

Gassho,
Entai